Why Don't Housing Choice Voucher Recipients Live Near Better Schools? Insights from Big Data

Housing choice vouchers provide low‐income households with additional income to spend on rental housing in the private market. The assistance vouchers provide is substantial, offering the potential to dramatically expand the neighborhoods—and associated public schools—that low‐income households can reach. However, existing research on the program suggests that housing choice voucher holders live in neighborhoods with schools that are no better than those accessible to other households with similar incomes. Households, in other words, do not seem to spend the additional income provided by the voucher to access better schools. In this analysis we rely on a large‐scale administrative data set to explore why voucher households typically do not live near to better schools, as measured by school‐level proficiency rates. We combine confidential administrative data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development on 1.4 million housing choice voucher holders in 15 states, with school‐level data from 5,841 different school districts, to examine why the average housing voucher holder does not live near to higher‐performing schools than otherwise similar households without vouchers. Specifically, we use the large‐scale administrative data set to test whether voucher holders living in areas with good schools nearby and slack housing markets move toward better schools when schools become salient for them—that is, when their oldest child becomes school eligible. We take advantage of the thick sample of households with young children provided through our administrative data to implement both a household fixed effects and a regression discontinuity design. Together these analyses shed light on whether voucher households are more likely to move toward better schools when schools are most relevant, and how market conditions shape that response. We find that families with vouchers are more likely to move toward a better school in the year before their oldest child meets the eligibility cutoff for kindergarten, suggesting salience matters. Further, the magnitude of the effect is larger in metropolitan areas with a relatively high share of affordable rental units located near high‐performing schools and in neighborhoods in close proximity to higher‐performing schools. Results suggest that, if given the appropriate information and opportunities, more voucher families would move to better schools when their children reach school age.     

THE ART AND SCIENCE OF CHILD CUSTODY EVALUATIONS

Should a child custody evaluation be a clinical tool informed by forensic methods and procedures or a forensic tool informed by clinical experience? The authors conclude that an evaluation requires a delicate blend of scientific thinking, clinical understanding, through observations, appropriate use of psychological tests, and self‐report measures and information from sufficient collateral sources. Evaluators must pay attention to internal biases and integrate them with the relevant literature. Finally, evaluators must remember that their evaluation and reports will be used by both the courts and the family in reaching a decision on behalf of the children.     

Markets in a Democracy

The global financial – and now economic – crisis has demonstrated that markets, and particularly financial markets, are not self-correcting and that, if left unregulated, they will inevitably overreach themselves and lead to excess. Governments have a duty to regulate markets in the public interest but where (as in the case of recession) markets produce adverse outcomes, governments also have a duty to lean against market logic in order to minimise those outcomes. These lessons extend well beyond purely economic matters. Unregulated markets will inevitably produce social and environmental outcomes that reflect narrow and short-term individual and sectoral interests rather than those of society as a whole. The whole point of democracy is that it allows the less powerful majority to use the power and legitimacy of government to offset and counteract the economic power of a minority. If the market cannot be or is not challenged, democracy itself is weakened, loses its point and forfeits the confidence of the people it is meant to serve.     

Revitalizing inner‐city neighborhoods: New York city's Ten‐Year Plan

Abstract

This article examines the impact of New York City's Ten‐Year Plan on the sale prices of homes in surrounding neighborhoods. Beginning in the mid‐1980s, New York City invested $5.1 billion in constructing or rehabilitating over 180,000 units of housing in many of the city's most distressed neighborhoods. One of the main purposes was to spur neighborhood revitalization.

In this article, we describe the origins of the Ten‐Year Plan, as well as the various programs the city used to implement it, and estimate whether housing built or rehabilitated under the Ten‐Year Plan affected the prices of nearby homes. The prices of homes within 500 feet of Ten‐Year Plan units rose relative to those located beyond 500 feet, but still within the same census tract. These findings are consistent with the proposition that well‐planned project‐based housing programs can generate positive spillover effects and contribute to efforts to revitalize inner‐city neighborhoods.     

An interdisciplinary collaborative model for developing psycholegal questions in court ordered child custody evaluations

When a child custody evaluation is ordered from the bench, it is common practice for a judge to include a request for psychological evaluation of the parents and their minor children. Occasionally, a judge will provide a list of questions to be assessed. It is often left to the examiner to draw inferences from the court order and pleadings about the precise scope and purpose of the evaluation. This article proposes a model for the interdisciplinary collaboration of judges, attorneys and evaluators prior to the writing of the court order in the formulation of specific psycholegal questions that reflect the concerns of the court as well as those of the attorney and their clients and which may be anchored in the behavioral science literature. Such a model best suits the court by providing information on specific, legally relevant areas useful to the trier of fact.     

SCIENTIFICALLY CRAFTED CHILD CUSTODY EVALUATIONS

Part 1 of this two-part series proposed the use of an interdisciplinary model in the development of psycholegal questions that guide child custody evaluations. It was argued that defining the scope and focus of an evaluation at the time that a court order is entered provides a more structured and clearly defined set of questions to be researched and examined within the context of the behavioral science literature. The present article offers a conceptual model to be used in gathering and analyzing data in child custody evaluations. It is argued that the use of forensic methodology provides a more scientific basis for the information provided by the evaluator to the trier of fact, ultimately resulting in a more useful and accurate picture of the family in question.